


To Have, to Hold

by SassafrassRex (Serbajean)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Jic, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Panic Attack, VERY VERY VERY established, established!uliro, in case it implodes into a ghosttown, tumblr exodus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 13:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16874133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serbajean/pseuds/SassafrassRex
Summary: Ulaz doesn't let it master him often.Cross-post from Tumblr. Originallyhere.





	To Have, to Hold

 

Ulaz is holding onto something.

“–Pidge gave him one of those  _looks._  You know the ones –”

There is a hand against his head, snaked up behind his ear. His back is pressed against something cold, his face, against something warm.

“–walked out and I think Platt was flipping him off? You know, you’re doing really well. Just. Keep it up for me. Just keep it up, I’ll be here… Anyway, I can never guess with the mice, one way or –”

Shiro is here.

“We’ve got time. We’re in the Castle, we’ve got time. Can you tell me what room we’re in?”

Shiro is right here.

Ulaz has worked with the Blades for years. In that time, he has seen and done many things that have left him changed (not often for the better). But he keeps it well in hand. He doesn’t let it master him.

Rather, he doesn’t let master him often.

This time, it had been the thought of his first partner. A day’s worth of stress had left him frayed, and he’d been sparring it out with Shiro. And then all it took was the briefest recollection of the way she’d died. Just that.

And all at once, the walls were pressing inwards. Bounding across from him, sweat-slicked and smiling wild, Shiro had suddenly seemed _intolerably_ far away. Ulaz’s empty hands spasmed. Growling rumbled its way out of his chest with the need to have, hold, to keep close–

Ulaz closed his fists on Shiro and held on. But that didn’t stop it. The walls pressed in, he couldn’t seem to get enough air. Shiro’s worried face blurred, Ulaz could hear him calling; voice faint like it was coming from somewhere lightyears too far off. Pain tightened in his chest, and it occurred to him that something might be seriously wrong.

And that seems to have been the last coherent thought he’d had.

“Can you tell me?”

He’s sitting on the floor. There’s a wall at his back. The reason he smells Shiro everywhere because he’s pressed his head against Shiro’s chest. The sonorous drumming he hears; that’s Shiro’s heart. The fabric he’s curled his hand into; that’s the shirt Shiro’s wearing.

He is on the floor and Shiro is holding him.

“We’ve got time.” The voice Shiro always uses, when trying to impart calm. The voice he’d once used to quiet a spooked  _dvaska,_ before it threw Pidge to the ground. The same voice he’s used every other time Ulaz has burdened him like this. “There’s time, what room are we in? Can you tell me?”

Slowly Ulaz’s mind cycles back up to its normal processing capacity. He’d panicked, and Shiro’s been holding him since.

Or – Ulaz looks down – he’s been holding Shiro. One hand clawed into his shirt, the other wrapped around a forearm, grip tight enough that it must be hurting.

Shiro neglects to mention if it is. “You’re doing really well. Can you tell me where we are?”

“Fourth deck,” he grunts out, still drawing in too much air, too fast.  

“Yeah.” Shiro’s breath stutters just once. “Hey, hi there. Yep, fourth. Thank you. Okay, how–” Shiro shifts just the  _tiniest_ increment, and Ulaz growls with as much as air as he can force into it.

“Sorry,” Shiro settles back into place. “I’m not going anywhere. Just didn’t want you to feel smothered. But I won’t go anywhere, I promise. Okay, can you tell…”

Shiro asks him more questions about the textures he’s feeling, the sounds he’s hearing. Just simple, grounding questions, interspersed with reminders to  _breathe, okay? Here now, count,_ and with more inane anecdotes about his friends. All routine. They distract from how increasingly furious Ulaz is with himself, for having slipped like this (again).

It takes him too long, but eventually he’s satisfied that he can expel a breath smoothly, without immediately gasping in another one. He starts to push away, tugging Shiro’s hands off him. “I’m sorry,” and wishes he could brush off embarrassment just as easily. The sooner this is forgotten, the better. What time is it, now? Late, he figures, by how the lights have dimmed. Ulaz tries to gather his thoughts together. “I’m sorry, you didn’t need that.” Shiro has enough to take care of, as it is. _More_ than enough. Most days, if Ulaz could plant himself between Shiro and the universe, he would do so gladly. Instead, it would seem he’s added to the burden. 

“No, it’s not a problem.” Shiro tries to catch his eye (Ulaz tries to ignore how Shiro’s eyes are red). “I’m glad you’re okay.”

He can still hear his own pulse in his ears, not yet slowed down. “I’ve wasted time–”

“We’ve  _got_ time.”

Ulaz shakes his head and makes to push up off the floor, but Shiro plants one small hand in the center of his chest. He tilts his head, looking at Ulaz askance, “You know, I didn’t  _think_ you were unintelligent.”

Sarcasm. Earthlings put a different lilt to it. Ulaz has since learned to listen for the way incredulity makes Shiro’s voice climb, when he’s just encountered something he thinks obtuse.

Shiro leans in closer to Ulaz’s face, “How many times have you had to talk me down from my own shit?”

Ulaz isn’t normally bothered by profanity, but now the crude wording makes his nose wrinkle. Shiro’s hand carefully slides around to the back of Ulaz’s neck and, gentler, he corrects himself, “Sorry. But I’m not wrong. How often have you seen me through something like this?”

He waits a beat, then smiles, sadly. “Yeah, I’ve lost track too.” He brings his other hand up, holding Ulaz’s jaw between his palms. “So don’t start in on beating yourself up.”  _Again,_ remains unspoken. Ulaz flinches because this is not a new conversation. He’d been doing so well before today, keeping his head in line.

“You’re fine. Don’t apologize, just let me help, okay?”

But it isn’t right, Ulaz thinks. It isn’t befitting for him to  _take._ Not from Shiro. The Galra have taken from him already. His responsibilities to Voltron take from him, even now. Ulaz had not thought to be one more drain.

These are not new thoughts, and they must show on his face because Shiro huffs a breath and rolls his eyes. “You  _do_ know that I’m _glad_ to help you with this? That I can do this for you?” A tightness worms its way into his smile and twists it off-kilter. “I’m just glad when there’s ever _anything_ I can do for you.”

That is not new discourse either: Shiro’s quietly persistent inability to believe that  _yes,_ Ulaz is better off for having him, however careworn he may be. And his relapsing failure to acknowledge that they are _both_ weathered, _both_ worn thinner than they’d once been (and both offering up what’s left). Yet ever as always, Shiro will think himself neglectful.

But one repeat argument at a time.

(Aren’t they both too old for these insecurities?)

Ulaz wraps a hand around Shiro’s wrist. Mindful of his claws, he gently runs his thumb across the soft skin of its underside. Much smaller and thinner than his own, he doesn’t want to be one more thing for it to carry.

“I’m exactly where I want to be right now– no, get that look off your face.” Shiro flicks a finger against Ulaz’ temple, just jarring enough to make him blink in surprise.

Having witnessed it many times now, Shiro’s chuckle still manages to be a strange sight. One of which Ulaz has yet to tire (he much prefers it to rueful smiles).

Insistent and quietly earnest, Shiro swallows hard, “You’ve given me a lot. A  _lot._ If we go all the way back, I might still be with the empire, if it weren’t for you. And since then, I… don’t like to think of where I’d be if you weren’t around.”

Shiro holds his gaze, eyes a touch too red to escape notice. Then he ducks his head, as if somehow embarrassed by his candor. “So,” he pokes a finger against Ulaz’s chest, then lets his hand rest there, “Quit talking stupid. Okay?”

Careful, Ulaz tilts Shiro’s face up, searching for anything hesitant. Anything uncertain, anything put-upon. For tightness wrinkling the corners of his eyes, for hollowness dragging down the brave edges of his smile. For quiet confirmation that  _yes,_  Ulaz is one more thing on a too-long list of worries.

But it isn’t there. The search only turns up the same weathered (careworn) sincerity he’s _always_ seen when Shiro looks at him.

Ulaz takes a moment to think them a pair of idiots.

He slides his hand up to cradle Shiro’s head, then leans forward and plants a kiss on his mouth. This generous, indomitable little Earthling of his.

Shiro kisses him back, slow, smiling. Drawing up, Ulaz sees his eyes are lidded, his smile, easy. “Better,” Shiro says, before quick as a thought, he sneaks a hand up to flick Ulaz across the nose. “Much better.”

Ulaz flinches back sharply, scrunching his face and snorting against the sudden itch.

 _Cheeky,_ generous, indomitable little Earthling; Ulaz makes a point of squinting his eyes in distaste.

And Shiro rewards him by laughing again.

 

 


End file.
